Eggs, a near perfect food, by Wombat.

From Wombat's post to Trap's forum some time back:


//www.curezone.org/forums/am.asp?i=1183723



http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-86387583.html


The nearest thing to a perfect food: part 2.(eggs)
From: Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients | Date: 6/1/2002 | Author: Hattersley, Joseph G.
Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients

"Hot scrambling exposes the cholesterol in eggs to the dangerous combination of oxygen and high heat. Molecules of oxygen and cholesterol then combine to make what are called oxysterols. (1) (Cold scrambling before heating is much safer.)

Spray drying generates oxysterols. Spray drying is used to make powdered egg yolk, powdered milk, and also "1% milk" and "2% milk." It is common in manufacture of hundreds of processed foods including powdered baby formulas. So mothers start infants on the road to heart attacks in their cribs. Absorbed the same as other cholesterol molecules, (2) oxysterols in excess (8) can damage arterial walls launching atherosclerosis and they are carcinogenic, i.e. they can initiate cancers. (4,5)

Scrambled restaurant eggs are doubly dangerous. The egg material to be scrambled comes from wholesalers already powdered. So in a restaurant, order eggs soft- or hard-boiled, poached, or "over easy." There's no way to fake those.

Unoxidized, though, cholesterol is harmless for the other 99+% of us, as well as essential for life itself. Among other functions, it makes possible some of the fun things of life -- such as sex hormones. And "Would God have given everyone LDL cholesterol if it would only kill them?" I wrote in 1991.(6) He put it there to serve a function; actually, many functions, including transport of antioxidants out to arterial walls.

Lowering the high cholesterol using patent drugs may prevent some heart-attack deaths. (7) But are cancer, suicides and accidents better ways to go? The emphasis of "modern" medicine in America, much more than elsewhere, is to mask or reverse symptoms. For example, pain medicines shoot the messenger by disconnecting the pain message, but the causal condition worsens.

Frying eggs -- or anything else -- in trans (transformed) fatty acid (TFA)laden -- partially hydrogenated, polyunsaturated vegetable oil is truly harmful. In 1957, the USDA got the idea farmers could promote faster weight gain in animals using a lot of vegetable oil. It offers twice the calories of corn. Within three months -- all those animals died of heart attacks. (6) But agriculture had geared up to make vegetable oil; and no one had proved it harmful to people. So the financially motivated American Heart Association -- which flouts the research in its journal Circulation (9) -- helped producers promote it to the public.

Such trans oils result from bubbling with hydrogen at very high temperatures. In 1990 when the fast-food industry substituted vegetable oils for lard (lard is an excellent nutrient) -- putting into practice AHA "prudent diet" recommendations -- total fat in McDonald's fries increased from 17.6% to 27.9% of calories. And TFAs increased tenfold: from 4.6% to 48% of fat content. (10) Now trans fats constitute from 16% to 50% of total fat, not only in French fries but also in shortening, cookies, crackers, candies, imitation cheeses, most American margarines, puddings, pastries, potato chips, frosting, nearly all packaged and boxed food products -- and egg substitutes, (11) which are even offered to recovering heart surgery patients in hospitals. Such "foods" typically come in a box or bag and carry a long list of multi-syllable names on the label.

Many blame burgeoning consumption of TFAs -- together with diets deficient in EFAs -- at least in large part for the giant growth of American heart attacks until 1965. During World War II in Norway and Finland cardiac mortality dropped sharply because of low (Norway) (12) or no (Finland) (13) supply of trans fatty acid laden margarine. After the war, cardiac mortality soon reached its prewar level and continued to rise. In England, where margarine plants were undamaged, cardiac mortality grew every year through the war, as well as afterward. (14)

The debate about trans fatty acids has continued too long. (15,16) From experience with thousands of suffering patients, Sherry A. Rogers, MD -- a pioneer in environmental medicine -- has no doubt of their harm. She has found that heavy consumption of trans fats "literally changes the oil in brains and cell membranes" (17) and so can create high blood pressure, chronic fatigue, depression, arthritis, a bad back that doesn't respond to treatment -- as well as an early heart attack. (18)

William Campbell Douglass, MD, succinctly says, "You don't have to be a brain surgeon to understand the brain runs every system in the body. So when the neurochemistry is messed up, the rest of the body is messed up." (19) (He doesn't speculate about whether brain surgeons know of this.)

And Mary Enig, PhD, a leading American authority on fats and oils blames TFAs for the tidal wave of lung cancer in a period when cigarette smoking ebbed. (20,21) (As in the book 1984, most of Dr. Enig's workhas simply "disappeared down the memory hole.") So much for the American Heart Association and its "prudent diet."

When Holder milk pasteurization was first required in Britain, cardiac mortality increased 82%. Milk was heated to 145[degrees]F for 30 minutes. With flash pasteurization (165[degrees]F for 16 seconds), cardiac mortality was lower. (25) Pasteurization destroys the enzymes, protective bacteria, vitamins, many of the minerals, fats, much of the protein and Sugar lactose found in raw milk. J.E. Crewe, MD, at the Mayo Clinic in 1929 reported he had cured patients of anemia, hypertension, tuberculosis and many other diseases and conditions using large quantities of raw milk. In his work pasteurized milk accomplished little against disease because, he wrote accurately, the heat of pasteurization destroys the enzymes and other nutrients in milk, needed for its complete utilization and to enable it to do its healing wonders. (26)

Homogenization adds a further cardiac risk. The resulting super-tiny fat particles carry the oxidizing enzyme xanthine oxidase (XO) through digestive system walls into the lymphatic system and ultimately to the circulation, carrying oxysterols. (27) How important that is in the total picture is not known. (28) Australian pathologists found deposits of XO in arterial plaques of people killed by heart attacks. (29)

Kilmer S. mcCully, MD, "father of the homocysteine theory," has traced the striking decline of heart attacks since about 1965 largely to growth of supplementation of almost universally ignored vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). (30) Minor fortification of pyridoxine into breakfast cereals, and year-round availability of fresh vegetables and fruits have also been important factors in the decline of heart attack mortality since 1965. The improvement was well under way five years before the late, lamented exercise boom began. And in light of our discussion above, to attribute the improvement to the efforts of doctors and hospitals is worse than nonsense. T.R. Wenkart, MD, of Australia credits the timing of decline in heart attacks to the spread of meat refrigeration. (31,32) Egg consumption has affected the epidemiology of CHD. (33)

Three test comparisons, published the past five years in mainline, peer reviewed medical journals have demonstrated surprising (to conventional medicine) efficacy of vitamin B6 in prevention of heart attacks. The number of heart attacks among those taking this vitamin was lower by 73%, (34) 68%, (35) and 72% (36) than among non-participants. In the third comparison no other factor than B6 affected. cardiac risk. On vitamin B6 fortification of cereals and much, much more see Kilmer S. McCully, The Homocysteine Revolution: New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1998. (37)

Why does this vitamin reduce heart attacks so successfully? Dr. Lendon Smith and I are writing a new book to explore use of B6 against heart disease, to try to answer .that question and find ways to improve the result still further. Its function in lowering the toxic, prooxidant sulfur amino acid homocysteine is by no means the whole story. (38) Much of the explanation follows from the discovery that vitamin B6 is an antioxidant. A.L. Witting in America, (39) M. Nabu (40) and Fumio Kuzuya (who worked in monkey tests with Rinehart and Greenberg (41) after 1949) in Japan, (42,43) two researchers in China, (44) and two in India (45-47) found that B6 does act as an antioxidant, at least in high enough concentration. And, if vitamin B6 is an antioxidant at high concentration, it must also serve antioxidant function at low concentration. It may also, or instead, perform a similar function by modifying the activity of cystathionine betasynthase (CBS), (48) the enzyme that enables conversion of HC into cystathionine by the transsulfuration pathway.

Antioxidants do much more than remove an oxygen atom from a cholesterol molecule. They play a huge role in control of redox (reduction/oxidation) functions in the cells of the body. (49-52)

Sensible caution suggests that eggs, like other animal protein products, should not be eaten raw. Salmonella may have been common in eggs in the past; but a report in Food and Chemical News estimated Salmonella enteritidis (SE) might now be present in only one of every 235,000 eggs. (53) However, the USDA writes of more than 500,000 Salmonella-based illnesses a year. Ten cells in the flesh of a chicken can trigger infections. "Recipes that use raw or lightly cooked eggs can cause a diarrhoeal disease which, in serious cases, can leave victims with arthritis, colon perforations or other complications. The toxin has a death rate of 0.1 percent." Warnings on egg cartons would serve a useful function. (54)

William Campbell Douglass, MD, warns against eggs with broken or cracked shells, because over 99.9% of the infections still found in American-grown eggs are in the shells. (55) The shopper can avoid these by wiggling each egg in the carton before buying; reject any carton that contains a stuck egg. Thorough stovetop cooking will destroy any SE in or on eggs.

Cleaning up our food supply at the source as the sensible Swedes do would be far better than highly promoted irradiation of filthy food.

* Irradiation is a profitable way (for the concerned industries) to dispose of nuclear waste -- which, however, studies of hormesis suggest are not at all deadly but in fact promote health in low concentration. (56)

* Aflatoxin, an extremely carcinogenic substance from food molds, often found in peanuts, is produced in greater quantity in irradiated than in non-irradiated food.

* The spores that cause life-threatening botulism survive irradiation -- but their natural enemies die, increasing risk of that affliction. (58) Botulism can provoke very sudden death in tiny formula-fed babies who are not iron-deficiency anemic, yet are given iron supplements or American cow milk-based formulas, which are typically far more heavily loaded with iron than European formulas. (59) Breast milk contains almost no iron, so why do doctors load mothers and babies with iron?

* Further, a small study in India with starving children was stopped after two months. Eighty percent of the children eating irradiated wheat showed signs of chromosome damage (polyploidy), which was not found in the children given non-irradiated wheat. (60) Leukemia is a likely result of polyploidy.

* Information about the dangers of food irradiation is suppressed for "security" reasons. Whose security? (61)

Nor is cooking in a microwave oven safe.

* Atoms, molecules, and cells hit by the hard electromagnetic eradication of microwaving reverse polarity over one billion times a second. Even in the low energy range of milliwatts, no atom, no molecule, no cell of any organic system can withstand such destructive power.

* Molecules are forcefully deformed, their quality impaired. The electrical potentials between the outer and inner sides of the cell membranes -- the very life of the cells -- are neutralized. Natural repair mechanisms are suppressed. Forced to adapt to a state of emergency, cells switch from normal aerobic to anaerobic (without oxygen) respiration. Instead of water and carbon dioxide, this fermentation produces hydrogen peroxide and carbon monoxide. The newly formed radiolytic compounds are unknown in nature; the impaired cells become easy prey for viruses, fungi and other microorganisms. (62,63)

* Wisely banned by Russia, microwaving destroys some nutrients and turns some amino acids into carcinogens. (64) It destroys the enzymes and valuable special proteins such as lactoferrin. (65)

* Established Science and government claim all this doesn't hurt people who eat such radiated food; but neither those scientists nor government ever tested their claims. Why?

* Hans Hertel, MD, of Germany did the first, small but well-controlled study of the effects of microwaved nutrients on the blood and physiology of humans. The blood of those who consumed microwaved food for two months showed pathological changes compared to matched controls who ate food cooked with heat. The changes included a decrease in all hemoglobin values and deterioration in cholesterol, especially the HDL and LDL (high- and low-density cholesterol) values and ratio. Lymphocytes (white blood cells) showed a more distinct short-term increase after the intake of microwaved food than after normally cooked foods. (66,67)

* Moreover, warming breast milk in a microwave oven destroys 98% of its immunoglobulin-A antibodies and 96% of its liposome activity, reducing the milk's resistance to infectious forms of E. coli (68) -- which harm mostly people with blood type O. (69)

* In particular, do not microwave food products in plastic wrap. Carcinogens and xenoestrogens, including DEHA (di(ethylhexyl) adepate) reach the food at four million times the FDA standard. The standard is 0.05 parts per billion; the finding was 200 to 500 parts per million. (70)

So, simplest is best. Boil-eggs 5 to 6 minutes on top of the stove, so that they reach at least 140[degrees]F. There's no need to fear oxysterols in boiled eggs. Air for the chick embryo, if there had been one, would have passed through the shell. Yet few molecules of oxygen can penetrate it under water in so short a time.

For a taste treat: Two soft-boiled eggs are delicious, lubricated with coconut oil and flavored with Sea Salt and Spike (all-natural seasoning from health food store). (Peeling the shell off a hard-boiled egg is easier held under a running coldwater faucet.) Contrary to widespread propaganda, coconut oil is perfectly safe to eat and offers great nutritional advantages. The body requires saturated fat, which eggs and coconut oil contain, to enable assimilation of other nutrients. Coconut oil stimulates thyroid function, (71) and it has wonderful antiseptic, bactericidal properties. (72) Like mother's milk it is rich in lauric acid -- which protects against bacteria, viruses, yeasts, fungi, (73) cancer, (74-76) and anecdotally, against AIDS. (77) Populations that consume a lot of coconut and coconut oil have very few heart attacks.

Sold in jars in health food stores and many food co-ops, coconut oil is firm at room temperature and never oxidizes (it doesn't turn rancid). Ignore the label warning against its ingestion; one can liberally add it to hot food, where it melts. (But coconut milk contains too much sugar. (78)) "Over easy" in a little butter -- yes, butter -- or extra-virgin olive oil is another good way to prepare eggs (first, put a few drops of water in the pan).

Exceeding 118[degrees]F may sacrifice the enzymes -- which are necessary for absorption and utilization of all nutrients. (79) You are what you absorb, not what you eat; but that loss may be regarded as unavoidable because of the need to kill any infectious organisms. However, Lita Lee, PhD (chemistry), an authority on enzymes (80) and an enzyme therapist, believes some enzymes survive stovetop cooking in food that is steamed over boiling water. (81) Unlike processed and cooked foods, raw whole vegetables and fruits contain the enzymes required for their absorption and utilization; and one can take enzyme supplements. (82)

Eggs appear to protect against heart attacks. In the late 1960s the American Cancer Society completed an eight-year retrospective survey of 800,428 people. Those who ate five or more eggs a week and a considerable amount of meat and greasy food had slightly fewer heart attacks and stroke deaths than those who ate fewer than five eggs a week and less of those other supposedly dangerous foods. (The summary of this never-completed study came to me in 1989 in a letter from Louis Garfinckel, Director of Research of ACS. It was later published.)

Why? Eggs are lower in the essential amino acid methionine than red meat, milk and milk products. Excess methionine in such foods converts in normal metabolism of healthy people into pro-oxidant, atherogenic, thrombogenic, osteoporosis- and arterial spasm promoting, carcinogenic (83) homocysteine (HC). (84,85) HC also creates more oxysterols, which may be its principal mechanism of causing arterial damage. (87)

Those conducting the study didn't report on cooking methods, and no doubt many of the surveyed people scrambled their eggs. We saw that hot scrambling creates risky LDL-cholesterol oxidation, and as mentioned earlier, restaurant-scrambled eggs prepared from spray-dried egg powder are doubly dangerous. But for this, I propose that the cardiac advantage for people eating more than five eggs a week would have been much greater than "slight."

Although eggs' modest content of multi-protective vitamin B6 isn't likely to survive cooking, (88) they retain all of eggs' other great nutrients including their abundant lecithin.

Amazingly, the sulfur in eggs cures some people's X-ray-confirmed osteoarthritis. Tired of daily eggs for breakfast after decades, in 1982 I switched to cooked cereal. As a lad of 13, I had fallen 30 feet down a cliff onto my head and shoulders -- sustaining a slight concussion but seemingly no known aftereffects. Yet 47 years later, a totally new neck pain appeared and quickly grew intolerable. After reading up about eggs I resumed eating them, and the pain faded away.

The sulfur in eggs is excellent in detoxification, (89,90) explaining its help against arthritis. The body needs sulfur to make glutathione, the main detoxifier of the body. "Glutathione S-transferase is a phase II detoxifying enzyme that involves the ability to connect a glutathione molecule to a bio-transformed intermediate to produce a nontoxic, excretable material." (91) Glutathione can even reverse aflatoxincaused liver cancer in animals. (92) Sulfur also helps avoid cancer; evidence shows that sulfur "strips away" accumulated cholesterol and "packages it" for easier removal from the system. (93)

Like vitamins C, E, B6, (94) and the carotenes, co-enzyme Q10 etc. - sulfur is also a good antioxidant. And evidence cited here suggests that the sulfur in eggs, their many other minerals and vitamins in absorbable form, plus their lecithin, should enable adequate liver detoxification of any trace antibiotic, hormone and pesticide residues in commercial eggs.

Further, eggs contain eight times more lecithin to help keep body cholesterol fluid and prevent its deposition on arterial walls, than of cholesterol itself. Found also in liver, soybeans and peanuts, lecithin is an important ingredient of needed bile. (95)

Three to six eggs per day also provide "great heavy-metal detoxification." (96) I enjoy four a day. "Invading microorganisms can often thrive in a heavy metal environment...and tend to set up their housekeeping in those body compartments that have the highest pollution with toxic metals. The body's own immune cells are incapacitated in those areas...and so the disease organisms thrive in an undisturbed way. ... As long as compartmentalized toxic metals are present in the body, they have a fortress that cannot be conquered by Antibiotics , Enderlein remedies, ozone therapy, UV light therapy and others." (97) Further, such chronic viral infections "just love 60Hz alternating current," and so electromagnetic radiations, e.g. from cell-phone towers, can create evil effects on the brain. (98) Do eggs also detoxify ingested fission products? (99)

Currently recommended protein intake should be increased for those physically active or growing and others; these needs can be met in diet. (100) Where would we be without the egg? asked a group of analysts. (101)

Lecithin is in our every living cell and is a major component of our brains. Moreover, it and calcium in moderation (103) help prevent gall bladder stones. (104) Lecithin also helps against kidney dysfunction, liver-cell cancer, and it slows aging. (105) It assists in regulation of nerve function, cooperating with eggs and with caffeine in moderation (106) to help avoid Parkinson's disease. (107,108) Lecithin also cooperates with the B-vitamins and antioxidants (109,110) (including sulfur from eggs, and B6 (111) from other sources) in tolerating stress. (112) Choline, one of lecithin's principal components, assists in mental function including memory, (113-115) and it is important in fetal brain development. (116) Choline is responsible for the structural integrity and signaling functions of cell membranes; it directly affects nerve signaling, cell signaling and lipid transport/metabolism. Newborn rats that received choline supplements in utero or during week two of life showed improved brain function and gre ater lifelong memory capabilities. (117) Choline from the lecithin richly supplied by eggs also promotes body synthesis of carnitine, which is useful against chronic fatigue syndrome (118) and needed for heart strength -- further explaining how egg consumption lowers cardiac risk. (119)

Moreover, lecithin prevents liver cirrhosis in nonhuman primates exposed to excessive alcohol; human trials have been planned. (120) A versatile nutrient indeed!

Earlier, new-thinking cardiologist Joe D. Goldstrich saw no advantage in lecithin supplements, and suggested the best way to gain its multiple benefits is to eat foods rich in the nutrient -- notably, eggs. (121) However, recent research confirms that supplements of soy lecithin (the extraction process is thought to remove the parts that can harm brain function), or better, phosphatidyl choline are indeed beneficial. (122) But of course, no supplement provides eggs' many other nutritional benefits.

Eggs are a rich source of betaine, also known as trimethyl glycine. Eggs and liver are its best food sources. This substance cooperates with folate and vitamin B2 (riboflavin) in remethylation of homocysteine back into methionine. Particularly for patients with homocystinuria, it lowers HC, a leading risk factor for coronary heart disease and very much more. Betaine HCl helps restore stomach hydrochloric acid in older people whose acid secretion has diminished. Sufficient HCl in the stomach is required for absorption of all nutrients; (123) Jonathan Wright, MD, said in a radio interview in 1993 that stomach acid is ideally strong enough to dissolve a nail. (124)

L-methionine in normal quantity, as provided by eggs, is required for the body to produce S-adenosyl methionine, useful in treatment of osteoarthritis, Parkinson's disease, and chronic fatigue syndrome. And the body also uses methionine to make taurine, which helps in prevention of macular degeneration and heart failure. New research finds that eggs may be an especially good source of lutein and zeaxanthin because substances in the yolk make it easier for the body to absorb these compounds. (125,126) "High concentrations of those two carotenoids are found in [and so, presumably, required by] the retina of the eye, explaining why consuming abundant eggs in diet protects against macular degeneration." (127,128) (The same source speaks of ultraviolet damage to the eyes. (129) Is this a reflection, perhaps, of the Environmental Protection Agency's phobia about ultraviolet? Except for the shortest-wave segment, UV radiation in moderation is required for both physical and mental health, normal behavior and more. ( 130) And there is zero evidence that dissipation of ozone far above the earth increases risk to health. (131-133)

One analyst refers to lutein and zeaxanthin as non-essential components of diet. (134) But since those help avoid adult macular degeneration, they seem pretty necessary, and they do not get to us except through diet. For dietary composition, that meets the definition of "essential."

And finally, the whites of eggs protect against disease organisms. Their natural function is to keep bacteria and viruses from reaching the chick embryo; the whites contain a chelator (molecule-grabber) for iron called ovotransferrin. Any germs that enter the egg are deprived of iron by this chelator, and without iron they starve to death. (135) Shakespeare and doctors, for a long time slapped egg white onto a wound to prevent infection, knowing its bactericidal character, which could work not only externally but inside the body as well. Here is another incentive to eat all the eggs we want.

Further, each infection or illness so prevented (136,137) would have also prevented thrombosis- and heart attack-promoting fibrinogen. (138)

To summarize: the dogma of abjuring eggs, for contriving to lower cholesterol, not only worsens cardiac risk but also increases risk of non-cardiovascular illnesses. Eating all the eggs we want promotes good health in many ways. Prepared on top of the stove as Grandma did, they help us avoid many degenerative diseases of aging including asthma, arthritis, allergy, cancer, heart attacks, even Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. They help us to detoxify our bodies, avoid infections, and help us keep our vision. They are the nearest thing to a miracle food."